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Inventory of Hispanic-Related Texts at the American Antiquarian Society

The bibliographic data presented in this website is the result of a survey and inventory of Hispanic authored and related texts held by the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Massachusetts. The American Antiquarian Society (AAS) is among the most important repositories of pre-1870s imprints and documents in the United States and had not yet been surveyed for the purposes of the “Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage project.”  Its importance as a repository for historical materials cannot be overstated.  According to the AAS’s own description:

With holdings numbering close to three million books, pamphlets, broadsides, manuscripts, prints, maps, and newspapers, this library preserves the largest single collection of printed source material relating to the history, literature, and culture of the first 250 years of what is now the United States. It specializes in the American period to 1877, and holds two-thirds of the total pieces known to have been printed in this country between 1640 and 1821, as well as the most useful source materials and reference works printed since that period. Its files of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American newspapers, numbering two million issues, are the finest anywhere.

Given the size and importance of the materials held by the AAS and the complexity of its catalogs this project intends to provide only a survey and inventory of materials for future reproduction.  The AAS has restrictive reproduction policies and facilities, and many of the texts will have to be transcribed by hand at a future stage.

Aldo Lauria Santiago

Professor

Departments of Latino and Caribbean Studies and History

Rutgers University

Important notes:

  1. Many of the citations are rough and reflect their origins within the heterogeneous catalogs of the AAS.
  2. For further information about any of the items contact or visit the AAS.
  3. Improvements upon this web page will include the databasing of the references and more careful annotation of their content.
  4. All current catalog descriptions are from the AAS catalogs.
  5. Some items, as indicated, are not available at the AAS, only listed in their catalog.
  6. To search through a list use the browser’s search function to find specific keywords (CTRL F)

This project was funded by Research Grants from the Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, Arte Publico/University of Houston and Rutgers University. Katie Kivlighan worked as Research Assistant.